In May, Ascension, a healthcare provider with a network of 140 hospitals across the U.S., suffered a major cyber-attack that disrupted its clinical operations for almost a month. Experts traced the problem to a malicious ransomware that had exploited an employee’s computer.
Healthcare: Juicy Target for Criminals
Threat actors see healthcare systems as lucrative targets for cybercrime because they hold crucial financial, health, and personal data. A 2023 survey research in health and IT professionals revealed that 88% of organizations had suffered around 40% of attacks in the past year.
Complexity: Flaw in IT System
One major flaw is the rise of complexity in IT systems, says Hüseyin Tanriverdi, associate professor of information, risk, and operations management at Texas McCombs. He believes it’s due to years of mergers and acquisitions that have made large-scale multi-hospital systems.
After mergers, healthcare providers don’t standardize their tech and security operations, which results in causing major complexity in the health systems- different IT systems, different care processes, and different command structures.
But his new This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents